Year Five.

I have now cleaned out all but one of the cabinets in my room that were filled when I arrived.  The last filled cabinet has curricula in it, so while I can make it neater I can't, sadly, dump it.  (Curriculum sets for Kindergarten are huge, and I would like to disappear the HM set in my room.  I don't use it and I post the first grade alphabet cards.  I do intend to use the workbooks for homework packets this year, though.  Beats photocopies.)

Some of the stuff I found was kind of depressing, like manuals for an arts program.  Apparently there used to be District-adopted arts curricula.  Now that California can't even afford a Language Arts curriculum adoption cycle and the arts take away from the all-important testing time, I don't imagine I'll ever see one of these again.

I also found things that, frankly, the person who had the room before me should have not left for me to take care of.  Nothing as bad as muddy/painty/insect-part-y trays, but training manuals and observation notes and things like that.  Not cool.  Moving classrooms sucks.  Changing schools also is a big drag.  Clean out your room anyway, even though they don't give you any time or any pay for it.  (Easy for me to say, since I'm not moving schools or rooms.  But when I moved these in the past, I was very good about it.)

Last year, I taught two artists (Pollock and Mondrian), several movements/styles and various arty-sounding words (I mean, one of the kids wrote in her Paper Person Project that she learned how to make mixed-media collages in Kindergarten.  Consider these words TAUGHT).  We did a lot of sun-catcher/window crafts, some mosaics, quite a lot of sculpture but not too many fiber crafts.  I'm thinking to chart out what projects I plan to do when (although I'm hoping to get this Donors Choose for art supplies filled first, and that would make some changes to the plan).

I'm not entering the school building again until August, although there's plenty I could do.  I need a break.  This week I mostly slept, but I'm hoping that the debt is filled and I can be productive with the rest of the break.